IndyCar: Will Simon Pagenaud reestablish himself as a championship contender?

FORT WORTH, TEXAS - JUNE 07: Simon Pagenaud of France, driver of the #22 DXC Technology Team Penske Chevrolet, drives during practice for the NTT IndyCar Series - DXC Technology 600 at Texas Motor Speedway on June 07, 2019 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
FORT WORTH, TEXAS - JUNE 07: Simon Pagenaud of France, driver of the #22 DXC Technology Team Penske Chevrolet, drives during practice for the NTT IndyCar Series - DXC Technology 600 at Texas Motor Speedway on June 07, 2019 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images) /
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Following a clean sweep of the month of May, Simon Pagenaud has not had the results he has wanted. Will he reestablish himself as an IndyCar championship contender?

Entering the 17-race 2019 IndyCar season’s fifth race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud sat in 11th place in the championship standings with just 87 points, 79 points shy of teammate and standings leader Josef Newgarden.

After a slow start to the 2019 season and a winless 2018 season, which followed a championship season in 2016 and a second place season in 2017 for him, rumors had begun to swirl that Pagenaud may be replaced behind the wheel of the #22 Chevrolet after the 2019 season comes to an end.

During the 85-lap race around the 13-turn, 2.439-mile (3.925-kilometer) Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in Speedway, Indiana, Pagenaud blitzed his way to the front of the field late as a result of his prowess in the rain.

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Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon, who entered this race in third place in the championship standings, led the race late and was poised to jump to the top of the standings due to the poor results that Newgarden and Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi, the two drivers ahead of him in the standings, were slated to earn.

IndyCar on NBC analyst Paul Tracy made a remark that Dixon knew he was not fighting Pagenaud in the championship, arguing that he would put up less of a fight to retain the race lead.

Both aspects of this statement turned out to be false.

Dixon put up a fight that nearly resulted in the cars of the two drivers colliding with just over one lap remaining when Pagenaud went to pass him for the lead, and Pagenaud pulled out ahead en route to winning the race. In doing so, he shot to fourth place in the championship standings with 138 points, just 44 points behind leader Newgarden, 38 points behind Dixon in second and eight points behind Rossi in third.

Pretty good for a guy who Dixon supposedly wasn’t fighting.

But the 35-year-old Frenchman didn’t stop there. He took the pole position for the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500 at the track’s oval the following week.

Pagenaud then led 116 laps of the 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) oval in the race itself, the highest laps led total in this race since Dario Franchitti led 155 laps in the 94th running of the race back in 2010, en route to becoming the first driver to win the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” from the pole position since Helio Castroneves pulled it off in the 93rd running of the race back in 2009.

After Pagenaud took the checkered flag by just 0.2086 seconds over Rossi in second place to win this race, IndyCar had a new leader of the championship standings: Simon Pagenaud.

Pagenaud led the standings by just one point (250 to 249) over Newgarden in second. Rossi sat in third with 228 points while Dixon and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Takuma Sato sat in a fourth place tie with 203.

Wow — 47 points ahead of a guy who supposedly knew he wasn’t fighting Pagenaud in the championship — who knew?

However, ever since the Indy 500 ended, it has been a relative struggle for Pagenaud. He finished in sixth and 17th place in the two races at the Raceway on Belle Isle, and he finished in sixth in the race at Texas Motor Speedway, his worst finish at the high-banked oval since he finished in 11th there back in the 2015 season.

Newgarden now leads the championship standings with 367 points. He sits 25 points ahead of Rossi in second place, 48 points ahead of Pagenaud in third and 89 points ahead of Dixon in fourth. If Pagenaud and Dixon aren’t careful, the battle between Newgarden and Rossi could easily turn into a two-driver battle for the season’s remaining eight races.

Does Pagenaud have what it takes to reestablish himself as a championship contender?

Pagenaud has an impressive IndyCar resume that includes a massive 127-point championship victory over teammate Will Power in the 2016 season, a season during which he won a career-high five races, recorded a career-high eight podium finishes, recorded 10 top five finishes and took a career-high eight pole positions.

His resume also includes a career-high average finishing position of 5.3 in the 2017 season, a season during which he won two races, recorded six podium finishes, recorded a career-high 13 top five finishes and took one pole position.

But as far as Pagenaud’s recent success, it really includes this year’s month of May but not much else. Aside of the two victories he earned in this month, his only victory since he won the race at ISM Raceway back in April of 2017 came at Sonoma Raceway in September of the same year.

Even this season as a whole, Pagenaud has not performed at a level comparable to the level at which he performed a few years ago. His two victories are his only top five finishes, and without these two victories, his average finishing position would be a mediocre 10.0.

The 2018 season was a struggle for Pagenaud given the fact that he finished it without a victory and the fact that he finished it in sixth place in the championship standings after having previously not finished a season without a victory since 2015 and after having previously not finished a season outside of the top two in the standings since he finished in 11th in 2015.

But even the 2018 season resulted in Pagenaud recording four top four finishes in the season’s final nine races, including in the season finale at Sonoma Raceway. His average finishing position in these nine races was 5.44. However, that momentum has simply not carried over into the 2019 season outside of the month of May.

It is also worth noting that the Indy 500 is a double points-paying race. Without devaluing or disrespecting the life-changing accomplishment that is winning the Indy 500, this essentially means that Pagenaud’s overall level of success this season is slightly less than what the championship standings reflect.

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Will Simon Pagenaud reestablish himself as a true contender for the 2019 IndyCar championship following a relatively lackluster post-Indianapolis 500 three-race stint? It will most definitely be a challenge for him given who he needs to chase down in the championship standings and given his struggles over the last two-plus seasons, but he is capable of at least making it close given what he has proven he can do in this series.